Many of the works I have taken inspiration from have also been playful with the notion of documentary being purely a factual representation of the “truth”. However the Global Warmning idea really will be blending fact with fiction and creative a fictional narrative based on actual facts. The Global Warmning creativity is in the content and the storytelling and its adhearance to the creative stylistics of the documentary modes I am using to my own ends. What will be more important is the mimicry and use of the codes and conventions of the modes to create pieces that feel like types of documentary that the audience are familiar with.
I will be working in the realm of a hybrid of the docu-drama which uses documentary form to tell an invented but plausable story and drama-documentary which is based on real events but uses conventional fictional forms (scripts, actors, narrative and structure) to tell the story. I need the audience to feel that the documentaries are right so an excellent understanding of the form is essential. We have all seen the disclaimer at the start of a film "this film is based upon real events" for fictional works and also "events and all persons portrayed in it are fictitious". In order to understand the ethics of manipulating this in a word sold to the audience as factual I decided to dig up some research on documentary form and see how far "the truth" can be bent twisted or subverted ethically.
The Collins dictionary definition of a documentary is “a factual film or television programme about an event, person, etc, presenting the facts with little or no fiction”. When dealing with the notions of factual and truth in cinema it is a huge can of worms and at the very centre of debate in documentary. It has been present from the inception of documentary and Robert Flahertys Nanook of the North’s (1922) staging scenes in through to the same being levelled at Sir David Attenborough Frozen World (2007) zoo staged baby polar bear footage.
No documentary can be real as all are representations. Even observational “cinema veritie” documentary modes are not 100% truthful. Do or can people act naturally whilst aware of the scrutiny of a film crew and the potential audience for the text. The moment a shot is framed, and edit is made then a decision has been made and the subject is being re-presented to the audience by the cameraman, editor or ultimately the filmmaker. Semiotics and the meanings to individual audience members of the representation will differ. The intended representation may create with the audience preferred dominant reading, professional, negotiated or oppositional readings in what Stuart Hall termed reception theory. The notion of the truth and distortion of it can be a good or a bad thing obviously. The pro Nazi propaganda of the work of Leni Riefenstahl such as Olympia (1938) and Triumph of the Will (1935) are the most obvious examples. However propaganda is not always a negative and such works as Night Mail (1932) promoting society and co-operation and more recently the campaigning work against the global domination and the effect on societies health of McDonalds in Morgan Spurlocks’ Super Size Me (2004).
Representation of the truth in film is just that RE-presentation of what is there. So if there can be no real depiction of the truth and no black and white there are a lot of shades of grey to play around in. EWhy not experiment in the outer reaches of this and see how far a fiction can be used to sell facts. there is still the truth in there but and subjective and manipulated one.
Throughout my work on the course I have been interested in this notion of "the truth" in documentary and I want to see how the fact and fiction, subjectivity and objectivity can be treated individually or as interesting bedfellows. Is bias necessarily a bad thing? Can the notion of "truth" be subverted to create new meanings? Acclaimed documentarian John Grierson considered to be the father of British documentary film, (who many believed coined the term “documentary” in 1926) faced criticism for his definition of documentary film, that ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ was somehow oxymoronic but I love this idea of taking actuality and being creative with it to create meaning. Werner Herzog as I have mentioned previously in my work said there was an "ecstatic truth". In this artisits use creative artistic licenses, aesthetics and the languages codes and conventions of their chosen medium from the creator to create THEIR version of the truth.
This is what I am aiming to do in my piece but not through the creativity of visuals and sound to create mood and be emotive. Greater emphasis this time will be in the construction of these not pushing the boundaries of style but working within them and using these to create the realism. the creativity will be as I mentioned earlier in this construction to create the reality. The acting, scripts, editing, cinematography, sound and mise-en-scene must ADHERE to these conventions to pull it off.
So just how far can I as factual film-maker go when creating representations of the actual FACTS but with fictional characters, places and events and still call the film a documentary? The facts are the truth but the characters and the narratives are not in my piece. What I am aiming to do is convince the audience that the piece is real though and the "based on true events" is just that factually but that drama is built in to hook the audience. The realism of the piece and representations have to be believable so the performance, mood, tone, codes and conventions used MUST mimic the real documentaries in order to pull this off. With the odd little slip as i want it to feel 99% right but i do want the audience to question and be puzzled by the piece in order to make them think about and talk about it afterwards.
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